Search Results for: Japan

On Mastery: Learning Kyudo — One of Japan’s Oldest and Most Respected Martial Arts

Photo by Vladimer Shioshvili (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Leigh Ann Henion was drawn to archery by her grandfather’s passion for it. She travels to Japan to improve her archery skills by learning Kyudo — a form of archery that is one of Japan’s oldest martial arts. In her short yet intense course, sensei Kazuhisa Miyasaka helps her realize that achievement with the bow and arrow comes only after mastering one’s mind.

We have not talked about the fact that, when our grandfathers were alive, our nations and families were adversaries. Or that when I asked him to introduce kyudo in just a handful of days, I was making an impossible request. But we both knew.

Miyasaka touches my arm, tightening my actions like the precise folds of origami. My projectiles hit sand, nearer and nearer the target. Until. Twack. I pierce paper. The target is so far away I’d need binoculars to see exactly where my arrow rests.

I’ve achieved an obvious goal. But my release felt no more important than my stance, this arrow no more special than the one sent before it. I arrived in Japan hoping to understand why hitting a target isn’t the most important part of this tradition. Now, I know the closest I’ll come is the realization that it doesn’t matter to me whether I hit.

When I hear the target rip again, from a second arrow, I realize that I had not been listening for it.

Miyasaka has been recording my final day with a video camera. He turns my attention to a flat-screen television, which seems out of place in front of the chalkboard where he sketches feather patterns. When he pushes play, I see a woman I do not recognize. She moves through the stages of kyudo form with deceptive ease. At one point, she closes her eyes.

When I see the pale cocoons of my eyelids, I think to myself: Seriously? I remember none of it.

Miyasaka looks out at the target and says, “You did that yourself. You have real skill now.”

But the sound of my target-slaying was not one of accomplishment.

It was a signal that, as long as I’m alive, I will not be done.

Read the story

In Japan, an archery quest leads to unexpected lessons

Longreads Pick

Leigh Ann Henion was drawn to archery by her grandfather’s passion for it. She travels to Japan to improve her archery skills by learning Kyudo — a form of archery that is one of Japan’s oldest martial arts. In her short, yet intense course, sensei Kazuhisa Miyasaka helps her realize that achievement with the bow and arrow comes only after mastering one’s mind.

Source: Washington Post
Published: Mar 16, 2017
Length: 12 minutes (3,064 words)

The Forgotten History of Japanese-American Designers’ World War II Internment

Longreads Pick
Source: curbed.com
Published: Jan 31, 2017
Length: 19 minutes (4,976 words)

Lost in Japan

I stood on a corner under my $11 umbrella, glad it wasn’t a $5 umbrella. I laughed out loud. What else could I do? After about five minutes, a teenage girl emerged from the mist. She was wearing headphones and a surgical mask. Surgical masks are very popular in Japan. They are supposed to be all about protecting yourself and other people from disease, but they’re also worn to indicate a lack of sociability, with which I theoretically sympathize but at this particular moment found inconvenient. No fool, the girl started to cross the street before she reached me, and I shouted “Excuse me, excuse me” and then even ran after her. She did not break stride. She did not even move her eyes.

If you have utterly humiliated yourself but no one is around to witness your humiliation, is it possible it has indeed not taken place? Asking for a friend.

– In The Awl, beverage writer Sarah Miller travels to Japan to learn about sochu, then gets wildly lost and learns more about her limitations as a traveler.

Read the story

In Bed With the Enemy: The Untold Story of Japanese War Brides

Longreads Pick

They either tried, or were pressured, to give up their Japanese identities to become more fully American. A first step was often adopting the American nicknames given them when their Japanese names were deemed too hard to pronounce or remember. Chikako became Peggy; Kiyoko became Barbara. Not too much thought went into those choices, names sometimes imposed in an instant by a U.S. officer organizing his pool of typists. My mother, Hiroko Furukawa, became Susie.

Source: Washington Post
Published: Sep 22, 2016
Length: 19 minutes (4,842 words)

In Bed With the Enemy: The Untold Stories of Japanese War Brides

Source: California State University Digital Collections (Public Domain)

Some people think the film I co-directed, “Fall Seven Times, Get Up Eight: The Japanese War Brides,” is a paean to loving Japanese mothers. When one interviewer suggested as much to me and fellow director Karen Kasmauski, we exchanged a look that said, “Shall we tell him the truth?” The film, titled after a Japanese proverb, is about strong women, for sure. Warm and loving mothers? No.

They either tried, or were pressured, to give up their Japanese identities to become more fully American. A first step was often adopting the American nicknames given them when their Japanese names were deemed too hard to pronounce or remember. Chikako became Peggy; Kiyoko became Barbara. Not too much thought went into those choices, names sometimes imposed in an instant by a U.S. officer organizing his pool of typists. My mother, Hiroko Furukawa, became Susie.

At The Washington Post, Kathryn Tolbert reports on Japanese war brides — including her mother — who struggled to fit in in post-war America.

Read the story

What Goes into Japan’s Famous Powdered Green Tea

Matcha ─ you’ve read about its health benefits, you’ve seen it in chic cafes sold as bright green lattes and iridescent bubble teas. Consumed in Japan since the 12th century, it’s suddenly trending in America. So what is it and where does it come from? In Serious Eats, food writer Matthew Amster-Burton provides a rare look inside matcha’s complex, multi-step production process. With his usual good humor, Burton takes readers through a factory in southern Japan and details the stages of production, from the tea fields to the leaves’ drying to the creation of tencha, the shaded leaf that eventually gets pulverized between stones. It’s a fascinating look inside one of the world’s most rarified and ancient beverages, and an education for those who just know matcha as that stuff in green ice cream.

I asked if I could taste a leaf. “Go ahead,” said Toshimi Nishi. I pulled one off and stuffed it into my mouth. It was tough and fibrous and tasted like, well, a leaf. How does anyone taste this and decide it’ll make good tea?

Toshimi Nishi can. He’s more like a chef than a corporate suit. He’s the man in charge, but he has an encyclopedic knowledge of tea. And he can learn a lot by tasting a raw leaf: the variety of tea bush, the quality, the time of year. Spring-harvested tea is considered higher quality than late-season tea. It was now July, hot and humid even in the mountains. Specialized tractors with spindly legs and deadly blades on the underside stood by, ready to give the rows of tea a haircut during the next harvest.

We got back in the car and headed for the factory. “Do people at the factory drink tea all day?” I asked Takahashi.

“Nah, they mostly drink coffee.”

Read the story

Starring in Japanese Reality TV

Photo by Karl Baron, via Flickr

Nagging questions and doubts remain. Have we somehow prostituted ourselves for the vicarious entertainment of television viewers? Has the private language, the intimate currency of our happy household, been debased by making it public? I had thought it would be ‘fun.’ I was wrong. But somehow it has felt like an education of sorts — perhaps in self-knowledge — however involuntarily acquired, however unwelcome the conclusions.

My husband and I, for example, have been forced to confront difficulties in our marriage. Under the pressure of Y-san’s gentle but probing, seemingly innocuous questions, a fine tracery of cracks mars the pleasant facade: how often do my husband and I actually talk? When was the last time we went out on a date, just the two of us? Do we gladly contemplate living together for the rest of our lives?

Professor Wendy Jones Nakanishi writing in Kyoto Journal about her family’s experience being filmed for a Japanese reality TV show. The show looks at the life of a foreigner in Japan.

Read the story

Getting to Know Japanese Dashi Stock

“Dashi is like the key actor in a movie,” says 83-year-old Chobei Yagi, whose 275-year-old store, Tokyo’s Yagicho Honten, specializes in katsuobushi and other dried foods. “But dashi always plays the supporting role, never the star.”

Most katsuobushi today comes pre-sliced in plastic bags, which is convenient and allows one to make dashi from scratch in less than 15 minutes, but there is another level of truly great katsuobushi — artisanal arabushi-style katsuobushi and the maturer karebushi- and hongarebushi-style katsuobushi. These are sold in thick blocks, with brown surfaces coated in sun-dried mold. They look more like works of art than food, and maybe they are.

Sonoko Sakai writing in the Los Angeles Times about the complex, umami-packed base known as dashi, which provides the foundation for so much Japanese cuisine. Sakai’s piece ran in January, 2012.

 

Read the story

The Tragic Life of the Courtesan in Japan’s Floating World

Longreads Pick

A glimpse into the difficult lives of Edo-Period Japanese prostitutes.

Author: Lisa Hix
Published: Mar 26, 2015
Length: 18 minutes (4,714 words)